NYU Abu Dhabi students come to the UAE from all over the globe with unique perspectives, educational goals, and career aspirations. Capstone projects by the graduating class often reveal how personal experiences can be combined with four years of education in Abu Dhabi to address vital challenges in our increasingly globalized society.
1. Refugee integration in Greece
In 2015 and 2016, over one million refugees and migrants entered Greece via the Mediterranean Sea. After Greece’s northern borders closed and the European Union signed a migration agreement with Turkey, an estimated 60,000 asylum seekers found themselves unwillingly confined in Greece, where the asylum application process can last from several months to over a year. This paper discusses the need for temporary refugee integration and seeks to answer the question: what are the main barriers to refugee integration in Athens, and in what ways can policymakers facilitate the temporary integration of refugees into the city?
-Annalisa Galgano, social science, 2017 US Fulbright scholarship winner
2. Global markets
A look at how globalization has affected risk breakdown in world equity indices during 1990-2016 with the aim that some of the findings can be useful in developing enhanced hedging strategies in the future.
-Rene Kukk, social science, 2017 UAE Undergraduate Research Competition award winner
3. Mobile banking in Kenya
This study examines the relationship between mobile money financial services usage in Kenya and the likelihood to mobilize savings in the formal financial sector. Promoting savings means expanding the scope of mobile financial services to address a broader range of needs, and gradually convert simple users into banking customers, especially low-income individuals.
-Arame Dieng, social science
4. Fighting malaria in Burkina Faso
Malaria is a major public health problem with 3.3 billion individuals at risk in tropical and subtropical regions of the world and an estimated 438,000 deaths in 2015. Major advances have been made in understanding the epidemiology and pathobiology of the disease. However, little is known about the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms modulating variation in host immune response against the parasite. In this project, we investigate variation in genome-wide epigenetic profiles of circulating immune cells of children from Burkina Faso before and during infection, and after treatment using approximately 800,000 epigenetic markers.
-Gabriel Figueroa Torres, science
5. Hosting the FIFA World Cup
Blessing or burden? Focusing on developing countries, the aim is to provide insight into their possible growth trajectory had they not hosted the World Cup, challenging the prevailing idea that hosting a world mega-event bolsters developing countries' economic growth.
-Gracious M. Nyamupachitu, social science
6. Singapore's coral reefs
Singapore marine waters are characterized by high turbidity due to riverine sedimentation input and widespread coastal development. This study uses next-generation sequencing to explore five dominant coral species collected from six coral reef sites across Singapore. The results of this study provide important insights into how coral communities respond to stressful conditions.
-Alexandra Gurskaya, science
Singapore marine waters are characterized by high turbidity. The results of this study provide important insights into how coral communities respond to stressful conditions.
7. Growing up in Pakistan
Set in an upper-middle class tuition center in Lahore in 2016, Humera is a full-length play that chronicles a chapter in the lives of three Pakistani teenagers from differing religious, cultural, and economic backgrounds. It examines their intertwined stories through the lens of religion and sexuality, and gauges the impact of such elements on the choices they make.
-Fatima Mann, arts and humanities
8. Worldwide crop failure
To substantially improve a prototype device that measures crop strength. The improved device will allow farmers to breed more robust crop varieties and reduce wind-induced crop failures that cost billions of dollars of losses annually.
-Ting Che Lin, Witold de la Chapelle, and Xiao Lu, engineering
9. Global cybersecurity
Commercial-off-the-shelf integrated circuits and commonly used protocols are susceptible to cyber-attacks. The aim of the project is to identify possible entry points to fortify these systems, maximize information collected by the platform, and minimize power consumption and cost.
-Pabro Pacareu and Pedro Zufiria, engineering
10. Colombia land disputes
An analysis that concluded land disputes in Colombia are more likely in areas with mining, agricultural, and industrial projects and where different ethnic communities have aspirations over the same territory. The research carries implications for the Colombian government as it moves to implement a peace agreement reached last year with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
-Sebastian Rojas Cabal, social science